When my husband, Bob, and I visited Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, home to the Sicangu Lakota Oyate,* we were invited to a Sun Dance with Edna Little Elk, known to all as Unci (grandmother), Alice Four Bears and Tate (Unci's young granddaughter). The Sun Dance was to be held in Kyle, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota Oyate.* We drove for two hours on some crude, winding hills and dirt roads. It was cold and windy, with low heavy clouds in the sky.
Unci and Alice Four Bears were to be the honored guests at the Sun Dance. as Lakota elders. The Sun Dance would held be in honor of tribal members, Joe Eagle Elk and Stanley Red Bird.* We were shown to a tipi with a central fire, a preparation place for the women dancers. Facing west, both Unci and Alice offered flesh to consecrate the Sacred Tree at the center of the Sun Dance with their tribal blood. They sat holding the Sacred Pipe, while medicine man Sam Wounded Head performed the ceremony. The women held out their arms as he took a small bit of flesh from each and wrapped it in a cloth to place at the center of the Sun Dance circle. We were all offered the pipe.
Bob and I were asked to gather sage out on prairie, which we did and then returned to the tipi to wait for the dancers. When they arrived, they went into the sweat lodge first for purification. All of dancers entered at the east of the Sun Dance circle. Some had pipes, and sage wreaths, bracelets and anklets. Women wore shawls around their shoulders. They then all turned together to face in each direction. The drums and singing began. It felt like the drums were the heartbeat of the community, as all danced around the Sacred Tree, holding up their hands to the tree at the mention of "Wakan Tanka," the Creator of all that is.
At the end of this day's Sun Dance, Unci received the pipe, lit it and passed it around to all who watched and prayed for the dancers. It was all very moving--the reverence and meaning of this event. I will never forget the honor and gift of that day especially, and all the other people we had met on the trip to Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations.
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| The Badlands - Pine Ridge |
- I could not stop thinking then, and from time to time even now, how Native Americans all over the country had once lived in harmony with Creation, as we had witnessed at that Sun Dance, and then were invaded by the Europeans, who violated and fragmented their cultures, including their means of survival: the buffalo; kidnapped children to send them to far away schools to "civilize" them. And they censored everything held sacred, including the Lakota language. Many treaties were made to ameliorate the damage. Most were broken to accomplish the goal of "Manifest Destiny" claiming all the land from the East to the West Coasts.
During our visits to South Dakota, we met many people, both White and Native, involved in initiatives to preserve the language and aspects of Lakota culture, as is the case across the country. Ron Goodman* a poet and teacher from Virginia, worked with others in this effort. Sadly, we also saw many Lakota with tormented faces in the towns rife with illness, addiction, crime and poverty. It was heartbreaking!
Fortunately, history has left us many photos and the words of Native Americans from the period during and after contact with the Europeans. The photos of faces--beautiful, noble and strong as their culture once was--aware of their ancestors and the spiritual nature of life with connection to all of creation, represented in daily rituals and in ceremonies such as the Sun Dance.
The Lakota have a saying: Mitakuye Oyasin (All My Relations)
"relations" meaning everything and everyone in creation.
- Chief Seattle, of the Squamish tribe, gave a speech before the Medicine Creek Treaty in 1854. By then, Native American lives and ways had already changed and they knew what was still to come. (See his entire speech at:
https://suquamish.nsn.us/home/about-us/chief-seattle-speech/
Here is an excerpt :
"There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory.... And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone...."
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds...."
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| Chief Seattle of the Squamish people |
1. The Lakota have 7 bands or sub-tribes: the Sicungu of Rosebud and the Oglala of Pine Ridge (where Wounded Knee took place) are two of them. "Oyate" means "people."
2. Stanley Red Bird was the source for Ron Goodman's book Star Knowledge (availalbe on Amazon), which documents how the heavens were a source of seasonal, practical and cultural ways of life for the Lakota. See Sandra's blog on Ron Goodman at: https://cosmicseanotes.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-friend-poet-ron-goodman.html
3. It is worthwhile to note the documented current attempts to erase this history and other events that have taken place as if they never happened, includng individual contributions of Native Americans, Blacks, women and others. These historic happenings may be interpreted as blame and accusation, which make some people 'uncomfortable." However, isn't truth more important than pretending these things never happened? Some Americans see such events (and there are many across the world, then and now) as our reminders of what can happen when there is intent to wield power over others by any means. We, who live in this age, are not responsible for such things, but, as part of humanity, we must accept that atrocities have occurred and can happen again if we are not aware, vigilant and active in attempting to ensure they never do.
